As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
A modular IHS, which may also be referred to herein as a blade IHS, a server blade, or more simply, a blade, may be described as a motherboard enclosed in a housing having a form factor suitable for inserting in one, or possibly more, of a plurality of slots defined by a modular system chassis designed to receive a plurality of blades. A blade may be a compute blade, a storage blade or another type of peripheral blade, a hybrid blade including compute and peripheral resources, or another type of blade. The combination of the chassis and any inserted blades may be referred to collectively as a blade enclosure.
The chassis may define two or more rows of slots and two or more slots in each row. A modular system chassis with 2 rows of 10 slots, as an example, may accept as many as 20 single height, single width blades. In at least some embodiments, a chassis may accept double-wide blades, double height blades, or both.
The slots of a modular system chassis may be accessible from a front panel of the chassis and support resources, including power supplies, interconnect resources, thermal fans, and the like, may be accessible from a rear panel. The rear panel may also provide access to one or more chassis-level management controllers, which may be referred to herein as chassis management controllers (CMCs).
Generally, when a blade is inserted into a slot of a chassis, a chassis controller detects the signal and initiates, or causes a blade-level controller to initiate an AC power-on sequence. To facilitate hot coupling of blades, the blade and chassis may be configured such that blade insertion and removal require little force. As an unintended consequence, however, the frequency with which a connected blade may be unintentionally unseated or otherwise disconnected may increase and each such event may produce a subsequent initiation of an AC power-on sequence.
In at least some existing blade server systems, a CMC may process each POWER-ON received from a blade in the same way. As an example, a CMC may determine whether to grant permission by obtaining worst case values of one or more power consumption parameters including, as non-limiting examples, minimum power consumption, average power consumption, and peak power consumption. In turn, the applicable blade may execute code to obtain values for these parameters or estimates of these values. The blade may incorporate power determination or power estimation modules as part of a POST that executes whenever a blade detects a power-on signal.